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OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

The Christian Enrichment of Life 



BY 

DAVID BAINES-GRIFFITHS 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CmCEVNATI 



¥K 



.3235- 



Copyright, 1914, bj 
DAVID BAINES-GRIFHTHS 



SEP 24 1914 



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C!,A379043 
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TO 

JENNIE BAINES 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Ascetic Blight 11 

II. The Ascetic Blasphemy 30 

III. The Christian Paradox 36 

IV. "Eternal Life in the Midst of Time.'* 5Q 
V. The Blossoming Cross 66 

References 71 



The editor of the Bibliotheca Sacra and the 
editor of the Record of Christian Work are thanked 
for their kind permission to reproduce in the present 
book such portions as appeared originally in those 
journals. 



Dear Friend, whose presence in the house, 

Whose gracious word benign, 
Could once, at Cana's wedding feast. 

Change water into wine. 

Come visit us, and when dull work 

Grows weary, line on line. 
Revive our souls, and make us see 

Life's water glow as wine. 

— James Freeman Clarice, 



INTRODUCTORY 

The Christian Enrichment of Life 

The miracle at Cana of Galilee is the 
symbol of a service which Jesus Christ 
is always ready to render his friends. 
He enriches the feast of life by turning 
its water into wine. He glorifies the 
commonplace, and calls us to the sacra- 
ment of a deep and quiet joy. 

It is true that the Wonder- Worker was 
a suflFerer who walked with unfaltering 
tread upon a perilous road. We have 
never completely described him, however, 
until we have seen the lighter and more 
blithe side of his life and learned that he 
is worthy to be called "the joyous Com- 
rade." For although acquainted with grief, 
he yet knew the meaning of bounding 
life and happy labor in a world which he 

believed to be his Father's world, a world 

9 



10 INTRODUCTORY 

blessed with a myriad pleasures not nec- 
essary to mere existence. He was like 
ourselves in his appreciation of sheltering 
human friendships, and in the wider social 
life he could give himself to the occasion 
without grudging. The biographies no- 
where say in so many words that Jesus 
ever smiled, but are we not quite sure 
that his face was ofttimes lit with smiling 
kindliness, for is it not written that mothers 
brought their young children to him, and 
did he not carry the lambs in his arms? 
Patronizingly, he has been spoken of as 
the pale Galilsean, and he was poor no 
doubt; but rarely was he so poor as to be 
beggared of gladness. There was a high 
joy he could speak of even when standing 
under the shadow of the cross, whereon 
he was slain at last. 

Out of the woods my Master went. 
And He was well content. 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 

The evangel of Calvary and the gospel 
of Cana are in essence one. Unhappily 
an emphasis has occasionally been placed 
on suflFering as an ingredient in Christian 
experience in such wise as to distort the 
features of the evangel and to obscure 
the genuine glory of the life of faith. 
Against the gospel of joy men have preached 
a gospel of pain, pain as a price of blessed- 
ness and the key of heaven. So stern and 
ascetic a view of life has no right place 
in the Christian programme, yet it has 
played a part in the history of the church 
from the beginning until now. 

In the days of the early Christian 

society conditions were somewhat favorable 

for a false insistence on the virtue of 

11 



12 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

sacrifice and abstinences. The gospel had 
come to men in Palestine who shared the 
Oriental tendency to retirement, contem- 
plation, and self-denying rigors. They felt 
also the moral pressure of the Essenes 
as the earnestness of that sect was mani- 
fested in the rejection of luxury and in 
abstinence, as well as in a communistic 
withdrawal from society. Moreover, tra- 
ditions had not entirely died out respecting 
the austere, ancient Nazirites and Rechab- 
ites. When there suddenly appeared in 
the Judaean desert a man clad with leathern 
girdle and camel's-hair coat and eating a 
sort of food that could be palatable only 
to the starving, it required no great leap 
for the popular imagination to see in John 
the Baptist an Elijah redivivus. 

Advancing from Palestine to the broader 
world, the Christian message made its 
appeal to the man who retained something 
of the old Roman respect for hardness 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 13 

and discipline. Of this type of character 
it has been observed: ''He did not wish 
his passions to be flattered, not even his 
pride or the passion for a social Utopia. 
He wished his passions to be mortified 
and his soul to be redeemed. He would 
not look for a Messiah unless he could 
find him on a cross." The instinct which 
leads one to declare "No cross, no Christ" 
is of itself true to a universal spiritual 
longing, despite the attendant danger of 
mistaking ends for means and forsaking 
the worship of Messiah for the worship 
of the cross. 

When the new teaching reached Alex- 
andria it found a field where neo-Platonism 
had been offering itself as a revealed 
religion, with an ascetic cast of morality. 
Salvation was by syllogism, and the saving 
dialectic could be exercised only through 
a purification of the intellect. The in- 
tellect could be purified only by abstention 



14 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

from physical indulgences. So far in this 
direction did the Alexandrian Platonists 
proceed that they came to speak of the 
human body more contemptuously than 
the Christians had spoken of the "flesh." 
Thus did it come to pass that, by va- 
rious avenues — ^the sense of sin, or a 
world weariness, or a dualistic philosophy — 
the strange, pain-cherishing practices made 
their way into the visible Church of Christ. 
Negation of life — ^this has been the chief 
note of a monastic influence that has in 
many guises persisted from the dawn of 
Christianity to our own time. Under its 
rule, to quote Professor Hamack, "not 
only culture, but nature itself is to be 
escaped; not only social regulations, but 
also man. Everything that can give an 
occasion to sin — and what cannot? — ^is to 
be done away; all joy, all knowledge, all 
distinctions of human rank." 

To look at some of the ways in which 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 15 

the exhilarating message of the Guest at 
Cana has been opposed by the deUverances 
of monkish gloom, there is the well-known 
story cited by Mr. Lecky in his History 
of European Morals: "A man named 
Mutius accompanied by his only child, 
a little boy eight years old, once aban- 
doned his possessions and demanded ad- 
mission in a monastery. The monks 
received him, but they proceeded to dis- 
cipline his heart. He had already forgotten 
that he was rich; he must next be taught 
to forget that he was a father. His child 
was separated from him, clothed in dirty 
rags, subjected to every form of gross 
and wanton hardship, beaten, spurned, and 
ill treated. Day after day the father was 
compelled to look upon his boy wasting 
away with sorrow, his once happy coun- 
tenance forever stained with tears, distorted 
by sobs of anguish. 'But yet,' says the 
admiring biographer, 'though he saw this 



16 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

day by day, such was his love for Christ 
and for the virtue of obedience, that the 
father's heart was rigid and immoved.' 
He Httle thought of the tears of his child. 
He was anxious only for his own humility 
and perfection in virtue. At last the 
abbot told him to take his child and 
throw it into the river. He proceeded, 
without a murmur or apparent pang, to 
obey; and it was only at the last moment 
that the monks interposed and on the 
very brink of the river saved the child. 
Mutius afterward rose to a high position 
among the ascetics, and was justly regarded 
as having displayed in great perfection 
the temper of a saint." 

A love for Christ which seems not 
incompatible with making life miserable 
for one of these little ones is a variety 
of devotion for which the New Testament 
does not find any place. What it has to 
say about the "'hating" of one's own life 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 17 

has been the subject of tragic misinterpre- 
tation. There is a perplexing anecdote 
about Saint Macarius of Alexandria. One 
day he was stung by a gnat in his cell, 
and he killed it. Then, we are told, 
"regretting that he had allowed himself 
to be irritated by an insect, and that he 
had lost an opportunity of enduring mortifi- 
cation calmly, he went into the marshes 
of Scete and stayed there six months, 
sufiFering terribly from the insects, as if 
they had known he had killed a brother 
gnat. When he returned he was so dis- 
figured by their bites that he was only 
recognized by his voice. When a younger 
disciple once asked leave to drink a lit- 
tle water because of the parching thirst, 
the old hermit, under whose care and 
tuition he had put himself, told him to 
be satisfied with resting a little in the 
shade, and to encourage him said that 
for twenty years he had never once eaten 



18 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

or drunk or slept as much as nature de- 
manded."^ 

The meek and ardent Saint Simeon 
Stylites furnishes a classic instance of the 
world-and-flesh-denying temper, his as- 
pirations toward a higher life being 
symbolized in the physical postures and 
altitudes: 

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee, 
I lived up there on yonder mountain side. 

Then, that I might be more alone with thee. 

Three years I lived upon a pillar, high 

Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve; 

And twice three years I crouched on one that rose 

Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew 

Twice ten long, weary years to this. 

That numbers forty cubits from the soil.^ 

Then there is the story, for which Pro- 
fessor Wilham James secured wider atten- 
tion, of the austerities of the blessed 



» Hugh Black, Culture and Restraint. 
2 Tennyson, "St. Simeon Stylites." 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 19 

Henry Suso, a fourteenth-century German 
mystic, whose autobiography, written in 
the third person, has tales Uke this to tell: 
"He was in his youth of a temperament 
full of fire and life; and when this began 
to make itself felt it was very grievous 
to him; and he sought by many devices 
how he might bring his body into sub- 
jection. He wore for a long time a hair 
shirt and an iron chain, until the blood 
ran from him, so that he was obliged to 
leave them off. He secretly caused an 
undergarment to be made for him; and in 
the undergarment he had strips of leather 
fixed, into which a hundred and fifty 
brass nails, pointed and filed sharp, were 
driven, and the points of the nails were 
always turned toward the flesh. ... In 
this he used to sleep at night. Now, in 
summer, when it was hot, and he was 
very tired and ill from his journeyings, 
or when he held the office of lecturer, he 



20 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, 
and oppressed with toil and tormented 
also with noxious insects, cry aloud and 
give way to fretfulness, and twist round 
and round in agony, as a worm does when 
run through with a pointed needle. It 
often seemed to him as he if were lying 
upon an ant hill, from the torture caused 
by the insects: for if he wished to sleep, 
or when he had fallen asleep, they vied 
with one another. . . . The nights in winter 
were never so long, nor was the summer 
so hot, as to make him leave oflf this exer- 
cise. On the contrary, he devised something 
farther — two leathern loops into which he 
put his hands, and fastened one on each 
side his throat, and made the fastenings 
so secure that even if his cell had been on 
fire about him he could not have helped 
himself. This he continued until his hands 
and arms had become almost tremulous 
with the strain, and then he devised 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 21 

something else: two leather gloves; and he 
caused a brazier to fit them all over with 
sharp-pointed brass tacks; and he used to 
put them on at night, in order that if he 
should try while asleep to throw oflf the 
hair garment, or relieve himself from the 
gnawings of the vile insects, the tacks 
might then stick into his body. And so 
it came to pass if ever he sought to help 
himself with his hands in his sleep, he 
drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and 
tore himself, so that his flesh festered. 
When after many weeks the wounds had 
healed, he tore himself again and made 
fresh wounds."^ 

Saintly women, too, of whom the world 
was not worthy, have exemplified equally 
with men the ascetic type of religious 
devotion. It would be ungracious to seize 
only on the austerity of their consecration 



1 Quoted, in William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 
307, 308. 



22 OUE BROTHER OF JOY 

and to forget that many an ascetic has 
been a ministering Greatheart, but the 
morbid austerities cannot be shown to have 
helped the world along. Of Saint Teresa, 
whose motto was "To suflfer or to die/' 
we are told that she was wont to go out 
of her way in search of further sufferings, 
to regard them as pearls of great price to 
be earnestly sought for: ''She was restless, 
uneasy, fretful if ever she were wholly 
free from pain or sorrow or humiliation, 
from the cross in one form or another. . . . 
Love, then, was the secret of S. Teresa's 
passion for suffering, love ever seeking to 
express itself to the full — making diflScul- 
ties where it found none made to hand, 
that it might have occasion to embody 
itself in strenuous effort and so relieve the 
pressure and tension of its unused energy 
and strengthen itself by strong acts oft 
repeated. Suffering was the food and fuel 
for which it hungered. Aut pati, aut mori. 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 23 

without suffering it must have died down 
and perished."^ 

Angela of Foligno in her quest of per- 
fection desired, she declared, "a burden- 
some death prolonged by every torment, 
and that every one of my limbs might 
be tortured. And these things seemed 
to me to be but small." And again: "I 
feel clearly that in this sign is the way 
of salvation, namely, to love and desire 
suflfering for the love of God."^ Similarly, 
in the case of the Blessed Marguerite 
Marie, founder of the Order of the Sacred 
Heart, her biographer says: "Her love of 
pain and suffering was insatiable. . . . She 
said that she could cheerfully live till 
the Day of Judgment, provided she might 
always have matter for suffering for God, 
but that to live a single day without 
suffering would be intolerable. She said. 



1 George Tyrrell, Hard Sayings, p. 150. 
2Algar Thorold, Catholic Mysticism. 



24 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

again, that she was devoured with two 
unassuageable fevers — one for the holy 
communion, the other for suflfering, humiKa- 
tion, and annihilation."^ And to cite a 
no less absorbing illustration of the ascetic 
blight, there was Madame Guyon, who, 
in her beautiful youth, deemed it a divine 
command that she should learn to '*hate" 
herself. As a means of fulfilling the be- 
hest she would scourge her body till the 
blood flowed. She would set herself nau- 
seating labors; she would lick the matter 
from a sore and put wormwood into her 
food. She had sound teeth extracted, 
and she used to drop melted sealing wax 
upon her hands. 

The satisfaction is not allowed of 
supposing such sad distortions of the 
Christian idea to belong exclusively to a 
bygone time or to a particular section 
of Christendom. The self-tormenting zeal 

J Quoted in The Varietiea of Religioua Exi)erience, p. 310. 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 25 

of the medieval flagellants has been ap- 
proached by the penitentes of New Mexico. 
Even for the wearing of the hair shirt 
there is contemporary ecclesiastical sanc- 
tion. Canon Jerome Ribet's Uascetique 
Chretienne^ published in 1902, with the 
warm approval of Pope Leo XIII, gave 
a chapter to eulogistic consideration of 
"The Austerities." "The Gospel of Pain" 
was earnestly set forth in the earlier 
meditations of the late George Tyrrell, 
whose devotional writings, marked by 
beauty of diction and suffused by a glow- 
ing fervor, won their way among many 
sorts and conditions of Christian readers. 
"What force," he asks, "can resist a people 
whom love teaches not merely to en- 
dure pain but to seek to revel in it?" 
"In Christianity," says Rudolf Eucken, 
"more particularly Catholic Christianity, a 
disparagement, nay, a contempt of the 
sense element, is still largely in evidence — 



26 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

an attitude of mind which originated in 
the tendencies of the decadent Classical 
Period, and the struggle Christianity then 
fought against a degenerate sensualism. 
As a matter of fact, we have to deal with 
a Manichsean element which has forced its 
way into Christianity, and, in spite of all 
outward strictness, tends to produce inward 
shallowness; for shallowness it is when the 
chief care of life is to carry on a struggle 
against the sensuous, to weaken, degrade, 
and stultify it as far as possible, and when 
those who have been peculiarly successful 
in thus stamping out the sense element 
are honored as heroes and selected as 
patterns, no matter how hard or shallow 
they may be. For, after all, what inner 
purification of spiritual life is gained by 
such a misuse of the senses? Moreover, 
this repression of the senses, like every- 
thing unnatural, must produce greater evils 
than those which it undertakes to remove. 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 27 

Nature is in the habit of taking a severe 
revenge for misuse."^ 

Our feeling of reverent gratitude for the 
sturdy and wholesome strength of character 
produced under the auspices of a stern, 
Calvinistic creed need not deter us from 
observing that here and there among the 
sons and daughters of that rugged faith 
there have been tendencies toward self- 
repression similar in spirit, if unlike in 
method, to those examples we have been 
considering. As an interpretation of truth 
and as a social force Calvinism has been 
one of the gifts of God to men. How can 
one speak otherwise than with high respect 
of that belief in Almighty God, that revival 
of religion which gave to the world the 
Huguenots and the Covenanters and the 
Pilgrims and the Puritans? Great causes 
have always demanded for their fulfillment 
some great sacrifices; and the Puritan, 

1 Main Currents of Modern Thought, pp. 403, 404. 



28 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

since he feared God and had no other fear, 
was all alacrity to suffer if only righteous- 
ness and freedom might prevail. With so 
vast a cause to serve, he felt clearly called 
to "scorn delights, and live laborious days." 
It was perhaps the excess of this his virtue 
that later led him to scorn delights when 
there was no practical reason for such 
scorning. He came at last to demand as 
an end in itself that self-denial which 
should be thought of rather as a means to 
an end. Thus arose the killjoy Puritan, a 
shining mark for the wags of literature. 
"Every schoolboy remembers" Macaulay's 
remark that if the Puritans suppressed 
bear-baiting, it was not because it gave 
pain to the bear but because it gave pleas- 
ure to the spectators. 

As guides of life, the watchwords, "What- 
ever is not a duty is a sin," and "Find 
out what you don't like to do, and then 
do it," fail to reveal the marks of an 



THE ASCETIC BLIGHT 29 

absolute or reasonable authority. The 
revolt against their spirit, against the cul- 
tivating of the uncomfortable for its own 
sake, has been downright, and sometimes 
bitter. Of such hereditary blight Mr. 
W. J. Stillman, in The Autobiography of 
a Journalist, has spoken in unforgiving 
terms. There was a cramping cruelty in 
his New England mother's creed; it was 
a belief, he assures us, that involved "the 
hanging on the cross of everything she 
most valued in life." Whether Mr. Still- 
man's judgment was correct or not, we 
are compelled to acknowledge that, not 
seldom, sacrifice has been separated from 
social ends, and has become a fetish rather 
than a method of ministry, with the in- 
evitable penalty attaching to the suppres- 
sion of whatever is gladsome. The 
punishment is atrophy, the "dwindling 
faculty of joy," a los& of the capacity 
for pleasure. 



II 

THE ASCETIC BLASPHEMY 

The foregoing illustrations may have 
served to show what the genius of asceti- 
cism is, and how far removed it is from the 
affirmative spirit of the Christian gospel. 
Ignoring for the moment any question as 
to the saintliness of the ascetics, let us 
turn to scrutinize more closely the ascet- 
icism of the saints. What underlying 
motives, what basal principles are revealed 
by such a way of living.^ It stands for 
what the pietists have called the excision 
and crucifixion of the natural life. It 
takes the practical forms of celibacy, pov- 
erty, obedience to ecclesiastical superiors, 
the renunciation of domestic ties, the 
cultivation of pain, and the repression of 
the pleasure-giving instincts. 

BO 



THE ASCETIC BLASPHEMY 31 

The old and vicious dualism which in 
distinguishing soul from body, spirit from 
matter, makes matter something intrinsic- 
ally evil is doubtless at the bottom of 
many ''gospels" of pain. If the body is 
to be deemed the home of sin, then the 
five senses are so many gateways of wicked- 
ness. Some of the Fathers were able to 
define to a nicety the characteristic perils 
attaching to each of the five senses. Two 
of the animal functions are held especially 
under suspicion, though their legitimate uses 
are acknowledged. Pleasure is certainly 
not one of those uses, for, says Saint 
Augustine, "lust begins where necessity 
ends." Even in the hearing of sacred 
music Saint Augustine discovered a snare; 
and did not Saint Bernard, riding a whole 
day along the shores of Lake Leman, jour- 
ney with downcast eyes, lest the created 
beauty of the scene should .tempt his soul 
from interior contemplation? 



32 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

A deeper fault in the misery-worshiping 
theory of life is its encouragement of 
unworthy ideas concerning God. One such 
unworthy conception is the notion, traced 
by Herbert Spencer to the worship of 
ancestors, that human pain and privation 
are in themselves a source of pleasure to 
the God and Father of us all. Of the con- 
sequences of such an opinion Mr. Spencer 
used vigorous language. "Led by the tacit 
assumption common to pagan Stoics and 
Christian ascetics that we are so diabolically 
organized that pleasures are injurious and 
pains beneficial, people on all sides yield 
examples of lives blasted by persisting 
in actions against which their sensations 
rebel." 

The assumption that the self-denying 
types of morality are due to an ancestral 
worship of pain is more picturesque than 
persuasive. In considering the more hideous 
aspects of asceticism we must distinguish 



THE ASCETIC BLASPHEMY 33 

between intentions and results. In inten- 
tion, ascetic practice has aimed at per- 
fection of character, a perfection obtained 
at great price. Speaking of the motive 
with which he thinks the ascetic temper 
should be credited, despite the flagrant 
lapses from its principle, James Martineau 
observes that "Its war has never been 
against pleasure, but against disturbing 
passion and artificial wants and weak 
dependence upon external and accidental 
things. Its aim has been, not to suffer, 
but to be free from the entanglements of 
self, to serve the calls of human pity or 
divine love, and conform to the counsels 
of a Christlike perfection." Dr. Martineau 
continues: "Condemn its methods as you 
will and satirize its extravagances, this was 
its essential principle, as it still is for those 
to whom the garden of Gethsemane is 
more sacred than the garden of Epicurus." 
We may grant this much to Dr. Mar- 



34 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

tineau's contention, that a singular beauty 
of character has in innumerable instances 
marked the mistaken worshipers of sorrow. 
We may go further and say that in their 
endurance of suffering, their "flouting of 
creature happiness," their example has had 
a tonic influence on those who have been 
prone to take their ease in Zion. So far 
candor and generosity would compel an 
acknowledgment, but not all the nobility 
of chosen advocates and exemplars can 
avail to redeem asceticism from its crimes. 
In thinking of the Most High as an isolated 
personality remote from the life of his 
creatures it has been possible for a wor- 
shiper to think of pleasing God in actions 
devoid of consequence for society. Now, 
we may be sure that whenever the con- 
templation of God is unrelated to the 
service of man, devotion has gone wrong. 
The religious exercises of the ascetic have 
frequently been without any ethical worth, 



THE ASCETIC BLASPHEMY 35 

and sometimes, as in the case of Mutius, 
they have been immoral. The devotee 
makes renunciations that are fruitless, or 
his "sacrifice" works harm to those whom 
he ought to protect. "'That wherein thou 
mightest be profited by me," says the 
ascetic to his father or mother, "is Corban, 
devoted to God." What with its ruthless 
rupturing of natural bonds, its inflictions 
of unnecessary misery, its "sentimental 
coquetting" with wretchedness, and, above 
all, its ignoring of the Immanent Presence 
in the world, this "gospel" of pain may 
well be called, as in Lucas Malet's phrase, 
"a blasphemy against the order of nature 
and of nature's God." 



Ill 

THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 

In the programme of Him who proved 
himself a happy helper at the wedding 
feast is there any place for the negation 
of gladness? According to Ernest Renan, 
Jesus made no concessions to necessity. 
"He boldly preached war against nature 
and a total rupture with the ties of blood." 
As defined by a critical outsider, Mr. 
George Santayana, the Christian religion is 
"a world-denying ascetic idealism." When, 
for the sake of testing assertions of this 
sort, we turn to the Gospels, a number 
of precepts and incidents are discovered 
which seem to support the idea that the 
changing of water into wine, at Cana, 
was a deed quite exceptional and not at 
all symbolic of the temper of Christ's 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 37 

career or of the meaning of his mission. 
The advocate of austerity is certain that 
the example of the Son of man is altogether 
on the side of a rigorous self-effacement, 
and he is sure that only "a bigot to lax- 
ness" would attempt to soften the outlines 
of the cross or to make the evangel other 
than a beckon to the brave. It remains, 
however, the privilege of any inquirer to 
look again into the narrative of the Master's 
life in the humble endeavor to reach the 
great Teacher's point of view. Adoration 
of the Christ is to be based on what we 
have really learned of him and not on the 
result obtained by making him the con- 
venient repository for our indolent idealiza- 
tions. What worth would that worship 
be whose incense served only to hide the 
face of Christ? 

What we find when we let the Gospels 
say their say is that, while there is in the 
teaching of Jesus a marked emphasis on 



38 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

the place of self -^denial as a means to high 
ends, there is not only an undersong of 
joy but there is a positive doctrine of 
happiness and a recognition of the capacity 
of the human heart for simple pleasures, 
and also an identifying of blessedness with 
belief in the Master's message. By giving 
attention to the "sayings" as they are 
reported in one Gospel, Saint Matthew's 
for example, and grouping them according 
to their stress upon world-renunciation or 
upon world-service we may find a way 
of reconciling surface contradictions and a 
way of making clear to our own minds 
just what we are to do in reference to 
the annulling or the aflBrming of our 
personal life. To begin with, we find in 
Saint Matthew a number of utterances 
recorded which might be classified as coun- 
sels of renunciation. Let us examine some 
of these before turning to sayings, in the 
same Evangelist, of another cast. 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 39 

Counsels op Renunciation^ 

Come ye after me. ... I will make you fishers 
of men (4. 19-22). 

If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. ... If 
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off (5. 29, 30). 

Resist not evil: ... if any man . . . take away 
thy coat, let him have thy cloak also (5. 39, 40). 

Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way (7. 14). 

The Son of man hath not where to lay his head 
(8. 20). 

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in 
your purses, nor scrip for your journey (10. 9, 10). 

Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's 
sake (10. 22). 

I came not to send peace, but a sword (10. 34). 

He that loveth father or mother more than me 
is not worthy of me (10. 37). 

He that taketh not his cross ... is not worthy 
of me (10. 38). 

He that loseth his life . . . shall find it (10. 39). 

The kingdom of heaven suffereth" violence (11. 12). 

And selleth all that he hath (13. 44, 46). 

Let him deny himself (16. 24). 



1 References chiefly to The Twentieth Century New Testament. 



40 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

There are some which have made themselves 
emiuehs for the kingdom of heaven's sake (19. 21). 

K thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou 
hast, and give to the poor (19. 21). 

A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom 
of heaven (19. 24). 

Here, indeed, there is a call for a re- 
nouncing of the world with all its pomp. 
Here is voluntary poverty, voluntary cel- 
ibacy, surrender of home, the breaking 
of natural ties. Here, surely, are demands 
for devotion that can be evaded by no 
exegetical expedients. In the face of words 
so exacting, can it be denied, so the ascetic 
might ask, that the call of Christ is a call 
to the abnegation of the natural life? 
Is not the Man of Nazareth the archetypal 
Monk, and is not the essence of Chris- 
tianity a self -impoverishment that sees the 
glory of God in the hectic flush of emacia- 
tion and in a cadaver nailed to a cross .^ 

How literally this one-sided interpreta- 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 41 

tion of the gospel may be held among 
moderns is forcefully illustrated for us in 
the religious teaching of the Slavic prophet 
Tolstoy. It was no small part of the 
Russian writer's equipment for his art that 
he knew life so well. So varied had been 
his experience that neither Vronsky nor 
Levin, opposed to one another as these 
characters are in Anna Karenina, was alien 
to its author. Says Nietzsche, "The most 
sublime glorification of chastity was writ- 
ten by men who in their youth had led dis- 
solute and licentious lives." From being 
a man of the world Tolstoy revolted 
toward a simplicity of Ufe which recalled 
the practice of some ancient prophet. Now 
at a brook Cherith, with ravens as min- 
isters, almost anybody could live a simple 
life, but the Russian Elias achieved sim- 
plicity amid the entourage of the home- 
stead at Yasnaya Polyana. Not only did 
he sturdily refuse to be clad in fine raiment; 



42 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

he was slightly ostentatious in displaying 
the garb of camel's hair. Yet who can 
listen to the blunt and earnest speech of 
this man, and fail to do him reverence? 
Passionate in social sympathies, feeling pro- 
foundly the shame of the injustices to 
which many human lives are subjected; 
keen in his recognition of the sham piety 
and inward foulnesses of a civilization call- 
ing itself Christian; not without skill in 
diagnosing the disease, so ardent in pro- 
claiming what he believes to be the sov- 
ereign remedy: 

He took the suffering human race; 

He read each wound, each weakness clear. 
And struck his finger on the place. 

And said, "Thou ailest here, and here."^ 

For remedy of social ills Tolstoy would 
appeal from the Christianity of ecclesias- 
ticism to the Christianity of the Gospels. 
In his paraphrase of the Master's doctrine, 

» Matthew Arnold, Goethe, 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 43 

The Teaching of Jesus, Tolstoy ignores the 
supernatural considerations and concerns 
himself with the message of Christ in its 
mundane significance. To that message he 
imparts an ascetic cast which is no less 
rigid than the regime of old-time monas- 
ticism. "We have arranged our entire 
social fabric on the very principles that 
Jesus repudiated."^ "The mercenary priests 
of a perverted Christianity" are, says 
Tolstoy, indiflFerent to what is essential in 
the doctrine of Christ. The essence of 
the Christian religion has not constituted 
the chief element in the doctrine of the 
church; the place of honor has been occu- 
pied by impossible metaphysical dogma 
and the true light has, for eighteen cen- 
turies, been hidden under forms and 
ceremonials. Salvation according to Christ 
is "the knowledge of the meaning of human 
life, in consequence of which a man does 

» My Religion, pp. 107-109. 



44 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

not destroy himself, but lives."^ The 
Sermon on the Mount expressed the eternal 
ideal to which man instinctively aspires, 
showing at the same time the point of 
perfection to which human nature in its 
present stage may attain. That ideal is 
the following of the light of reason as 
against animal impulse. On this principle 
of reason Christ based his laws: 

1. Be not angry. 

2. Commit no adultery. 

3. Take no oaths. 

4. Do not defend yourself by violence. 

5. Do not make war. 

Obeying these commandments, that is to 
say, renouncing our animal personality, 
we acquire our true life which will not 
and cannot perish; and when all men 
obey the precepts the kingdom of God 
will have come among men. 

On inquiring more definitely what Tolstoy 

1 My Confession, p. 4S. 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 45 

means by renouncing "animal personality," 
we are left in no doubt at all that he has 
small patience with any distinctions that 
might be made between what is of the 
body and what is "carnal." Our common 
glorification of marriage as a something 
ideally sacramental is to the Russian novel- 
ist a flat contradiction of the Christian 
view. "As for love," so he tells us, "being 
in love, and the sexual affection connected 
therewith ... is an animal condition 
degrading to man."^ In Christ's teaching 
there is no basis for the institution of 
marriage. From the Christian standpoint 
it is a fall, a sin. He who is already a 
husband and father may, however, find 
in the relation "a new and more limited 
form of service to God and man." 

With Tolstoy's interpretation of Chris- 
tianity as a whole we have here no especial 
concern; but when, as in the name of 

1 Sequel to Ereutier Sonata, pp. 157-159. 



46 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

Christ, we are told that htiman affection 
and conjugal love are a transgression of 
the law of the Son of God, we can only 
respond with the suggestion that such an 
interpretative result from New Testament 
passages is due not to any exegesis but to 
a process of distortion. So perverse a dis- 
tortion of the evangel is a reminder of 
the fact that through the ages the sayings 
of Jesus have not been exempt from the 
trials besetting the teaching of other 
masters. This it behoves us to remember 
before closing in with the ascetics' con- 
clusions regarding the passages in Saint 
Matthew, quoted above.^ The words are 
not to be considered without reference 
to the exigencies of the occasion on which 
they are first spoken. The speech is 



i**But deeper than the commands lies the spirit of Christ; and he who 
follows the law of the gospel without heeding the spirit, wherein does he 
differ from the Pharisees of the old dispensation whom Christ so vehe- 
mently deno\mced? . . . There is no joy in Tolstoy, and lacking Joy he 
lacks the deepest instinct of religion." — Paul Elmer More, Shelbume Es- 
says, vol. i, p. 216. 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 47 

Oriental, the temper poetic. The sayings 
are pregnant and brief. They are im- 
pressive in originality. They have a sifting 
purpose and are therefore severe, and 
they are of a confirming tone to all who 
have responded to the appeal to the 
heroic. With such sharp pictures and 
daring expressions the literalist with his 
morbid love of clearness is bound to 
come to grief. Furthermore, these hard 
sayings by no means constitute the entire 
message of Jesus. They present one of 
the varied aspects of the one countenance. 
In the same Gospel of Saint Matthew 
the life that Christ would impart is 
described in terms of its constructive re- 
newing power, and the note of good cheer 
is not wanting. Sayings now to be noticed 
may justly be placed under the title of 

The Good News 
Happy are the poor (5. 3-13). 



48 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

Happy are the sorrowful in view of being com- 
forted. 

Happy are the gentle. 

Happy are the hungry for righteousness. 

Happy are the merciful. 

Happy are the pure in heart. 

Happy are the peacemakers. 

Happy are the persecuted. 

Happy are the abused. 

Be glad and rejoice. 

When you fast, do not put on gloomy looks 
(6. 16). 

Courage, my son, your sins are forgiven (9. 2, 22). 

I did not come to invite the pious but the god- 
less (9. 13). 

The bridegroom's friends do not fast (9. 15). 

Cure the sick, raise the dead, heal lepers, drive 
out evil spirits (10. 8). 

The blind are gaining sight. 

Good news is being told to the poor (11. 5). 

My yoke is easy and my biu-den light. 

I wiU refresh you. 

The Son of man is master of the Sabbath (12. 8). 

It is right to do good on the Sabbath (12. 12). 

Happy are your eyes (13. 16). 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 49 

Rich treasure. "In his delight" he went and 
sold all that he had (13. 44). 

The five thousand fed (14. 15). 

Sanctity of the home (15. 6). 

"Corban," a canceling of the word of God (15. 6). 

Internal rather than external purity (15. 16). 

The tax for the temple, a social obligation 
(17. 24). 

The sanctity of marriage (19. 9). 

The hundredfold reward (19. 29). 

The duties of earthly citzenship (22. 21). 

Talents are not for hiding, but for using (25. 29). 

The wisdom of a seeming extravagance. "This 
is a beautiful action that she has done to me." 
The alabaster box (26. 10). 

Bringing his words under revisal in the 
light of what he was and of what he did, 
there is no final impossibility of getting 
at the meanings of Christ. So unprom- 
ising a witness as Friedrich Nietzsche has 
said that Jesus lived a "unity of God 
and man, as his glad tidings." He was the 
living Atonement, bringing the divine life 



50 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

to men. The details of his conduct are 
influenced by the character of his enter- 
prise. While he himself relinquished an 
earthly home and merged the family in- 
terest in that of a wider brotherhood, we 
yet see that he so regarded the home that 
the surrender of it on his part was a sur- 
render indeed. Similarly, in choosing cel- 
ibacy he is no denier of the sanctity and 
joy of the marriage relation. Saint John's 
account of the crucifixion makes Jesus 
think and speak, in his dying moments, 
of his mother and an earthly home. In 
their missionary journeyings Jesus and 
his disciples were often dependent on the 
hospitality of the villagers; but this was 
not so strange a proceeding as to arouse 
unfavorable comment. Although he was 
not rich in this world's goods, there is no 
warrant for reading into the entire career 
of Christ such dire poverty as a Kempis 
would picture. Was it literal homelessness 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 51 

or was it the inhospitality of men to his 
message that prompted the saying, "The 
Son of man hath not where to lay his 
head"? Many a home was, in fact, open 
to him, and in some households, notably 
the one in Bethany, he found especial 
pleasure. Our gratitude goes out toward 
Martha and Mary at the thought of the 
comforting hospitality they afforded their 
Guest. They doubtless deemed their offer- 
ings slight compared with the boons brought 
them by their gracious Friend. Wherever 
he went people were made better in soul 
and body; and his presence never carried 
gloom. 

The refreshing Christ could always dis- 
cover fit audience for his gospel. Some 
Mary Magdalene, ashamed of the nauseous 
fault of her youth, could find absolution 
and empowering grace in that high 
company. Laboring folk, with wages so 
small that they were sorely put to it 



52 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

in trying to make both ends meet, could 
discover a sympathizer here. Pharisees, 
churchmen, caparisoned priests crying 
"Church! Church!" at every word, who 
had nevertheless well-nigh buried God under 
their ecclesiasticisms, could in that piu*e 
presence become aware of the starved 
and weazened state of their own lives. 
Servants of the imperial government who 
had succumbed to a religious indifference 
misnaming itself breadth of mind; men 
and women of the lighter social world, 
beginning to loathe the silly pageantry 
that once had been their pride, could all 
find a friend and a helper in the Son of 
man. And men like the fervent followers 
of John the Baptist could find in Christ 
an answering mind; sad-hearted men, 
mourning a lost leader and feeling that 
earth had no music to charm away such 
sorrow as theirs. To none of these neces- 
sitous folk was the Carpenter a preacher 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 53 

from a pedestal. Toward people in the 
mass he turned with sympathetic insight, 
and in some sullied individual soul he could 
see the not impossible Christ. Your 
amateur psychologist may walk the highway 
"just to study the crowd, you know." 
There are dabblers in the problems of 
modern forms of human misery of whom 
it has been sharply complained that they 
are "glutting their ambitions on the sor- 
rows of the poor"; but the gentle wisdom 
of Jesus fathomed the deeps, for not only 
did he know men: he knew man, to the 
heart's crimson core. In that he could 
speak to what was universal, the immortal 
quality is in his utterance, and is it any 
marvel that his words have won a widen- 
ing way in the earth? 

In Dreamers of the Ghetto, Israel 
Zangwill has a story of a Jewish artist 
who came to learn that behind the Christ 
of the creeds there was a simple-hearted, 



54 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

gentle, and strong Man. The artist at- 
tempted to portray on canvas the Nazarene 
of his discovery. Allowing for the extreme 
of emphasis, the story is an eflFective plea 
for our thinking of Jesus chiefly as the 
bringer of glad tidings. As in the title 
of the tale, he is "The Joyous Conoirade.'* 
". . . With the lifting of the mists all 
that ghastly medieval nightmare was lifted 
from my soul; in that sacred moment all 
the lurid tragedy of the crucified Christ 
vanished, and only Christ was left, the 
simple fellowship with man and beast and 
nature, the love of life, the love of love, 
the love of God. And in that yearning 
ecstasy my picture came to me. The 
Joyous Comrade. Christ, not the tortured 
God, but the joyous comrade, the friend 
of all simple souls; the joyous comrade 
with the children clinging to him and 
peasants and fishers listening to his chat; 
not the theologian spinning barren sub- 



THE CHRISTIAN PARADOX 55 

tleties, but the man of genius protesting 
against all forms and dogmas that would 
replace the direct vision and the loving 
ecstasy . . . the lover of warm life and 
warm sunlight and all that is fresh and 
simple and pure and beautiful. . . . 

''And so, ever since, off and on, I have 
worked at the human picture of him. The 
Joyous Comrade, to restore the true Christ 
to the world. I give the Jews a Christ 
they can now accept, the Christians a 
Christ they have forgotten." 

If from the viewpoint of an Israel 
Zangwill there is seen this vision of a 
"Great Friend of all the sons of men," 
the picture can be no less gracious in our 
eyes, who know, of a surety, that in Christ 
we feel the heart of the Eternal. For it 
has pleased the Divine Goodness not only 
to make man in the image of God, but 
also to reveal God in the likeness of 
man. 



IV 

"ETERNAL LIFE IN THE MIDST 
OF TIME" 

The antithetical utterances reported in 
Saint Matthew's Gospel serve to bring 
into relief the ideas of self-renunciation 
and self-realization which form the Chris- 
tian paradox. If, before attempting to 
strike a balance between the seeming con- 
tradictions, we turn to contemplate the 
teaching of Jesus in its length and breadth, 
we soon confront the fact that his evangel 
contains elements of "other-worldliness" 
which apparently refuse to adjust them- 
selves to any demand for the practical 
in the here and now. Completely ignored, 
or else apologized for, by one school of 
disciples, the apocalyptic strain has else- 
where been seized upon and magnified 

56 



ETERNAL LIFE 57 

out of perspective until you have the 
spectacle of persons "ardent and imag- 
inative on the premillennial advent of 
Christ, but cold and cautious toward every 
other infringement of the status quo,''^ 
The revolt from such exaggeration is seen 
in the desire to dismiss as impractical 
all meditation upon the problems or hopes 
of futurity and to concentrate attention on 
those benejBts that may be realized by 
society in our time. Yet on resorting to 
the words of Christ we find an unswerving 
proclamation of hopes extending beyond 
the flaming ramparts of this world; and 
his expectancy, far from indicating a pes- 
simistic negation of life, was but the 
expression of his certainty that all things 
good had their roots in an eternal order. 
The life that he brought to men was of 
a quality that could finally be described 
only in terms of endless duration. 

1 George Eliot's essay on "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming." 



58 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

Whenever men cast about for a faith 
that may sweeten Hfe and take away the 
sting of death, they find it in the hope of 
immortaUty, the behef that beyond this 
experience called life there awaits us an- 
other existence, higher, purer, and happier 
— even life for evermore. If we ask why, 
when other hopes may have perished, men 
still clutch so pathetically at this, the 
answer is that with the promise of eternal 
life there seems to go a guarantee of those 
values for which men care the most. 
Take, for example, the instinctive craving 
for the restoration of lost love. Bereave- 
ment is a human commonplace until our 
own hour of desolation strikes and we 
are called upon to relinquish one who 
has been to us as the light of the eyes, 
one in whose approval we have lived, by 
whose ministries we have been blessed. 
When that darling voice is hushed in 
death we are uncomforted unless we can 



ETERNAL LIFE 59 

hear the assurance, "Thy loved shall rise 
again." So much can be endured if only 
at the end of the journey, after our toiling 
through the night, we may once more 
meet those whom we had lost or had 
seemed to lose. 

Latent or active in the human spirit 
there is a sense of justice, and this is 
accompanied by a stubborn belief that 
the Universe itself cannot be unjust. A 
certain dispeace would seem then to be 
the portion of anyone who awakes to 
the criticism of life; who compares the 
world of actual occurrences with the ideal 
world of justice; who beholds the mournful 
spectacle of "captive good attending captain 
ill." No matter how cheerful our inter- 
pretations of history, the truth remains 
that many crimes have never been atoned 
for. As far as the external record goes, 
might has often gloated over right. What 
is to sustain the righteous man, smarting 



60 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

under injustice, but the belief that his 
Vindicator liveth, and that at the latter 
day, the day of revelation of things as 
they are, his cause shall be justified, since 
the truth will then be fully known? A 
day of wrath to those who have made lies 
their refuge, the Judgment Day is a pros- 
pect of consolation to him who has endured 
for righteousness' sake. He is confident 
that "no tyrant hoofs shall trample in 
the city of the free." 

Analyzing further the common interest 
in the promise of immortality, we discern 
bound up with it the assurance that by 
and by, on other shores, if not here, there 
will be an end of sin. In that life God's 
servants render flawless service, into that 
city nothing enters that defiles. We who 
in our best hours are so deeply aware of 
wrong within, who acknowledge ourselves 
to have been baffled again and again by 
evil powers, who, despite our best achieve- 



ETERNAL LIFE 61 

ment, still find that we have dark sins 
to beat back and to master, who are 
plagued with a discontent that goads us 
on to God, we are trustful that when we 
reach the higher lands and have been 
vouchsafed the Blessed Vision we shall be 
free from the blight of the evil that has 
vexed us here so long. Nor is it morbid 
sentimentality but earnest-hearted moral 
aspiration that makes us wistful of the 
new life when sin shall be no more. 

Even the desire for the surcease of 
pain is not frowned upon, in the Christian 
Scriptures, as an unworthy ingredient in 
the hope of an immortal life. At times a 
spirit of heaviness may fall upon stal- 
wart men, a weariness wherein they are 
''tired alike of tears and laughter." In 
these less heroic moods it is permitted the 
jaded heart to dream of being, some day, 
beyond all strife of tongues and futile 
warfares and fading splendors. 



62 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

In that world we weary to attain. 

Love's furled banner floats at large unfurled: 
There is no more doubt and no more pain 

In that world. 

There are gems and gold and inlets pearled; 

There the verdure fadeth not again; 
There no clinging tendrils droop uncurled. 

Here incessant tides stir up the main. 
Stormy miry depths aloft are hurled: 

There is no more sea, or storm, or stain. 
In that world.* 

In so far, then, as the "other- worldH- 
ness" and the apocalyptic ardors of Jesus 
Christ are to be identified with values so 
ethically worthy as the passion for justice 
or the quest of holiness, we may not 
hesitate to regard his teaching as a con- 
sistent unity; especially when we realize 
that while our Lord took cognizance of 
the boons that are boimd up with eternal 
life he did not make such future benefits 



iChriBtina G. Rossetti. 



ETERNAL LIFE 63 

to be of the essence of life everlasting. 
When he most closely defined that eternal 
life he appealed not to the bliss concealed 
in future ages, but to a living, hallowing, 
and sustaining experience in the soul of 
man. To know God as Jesus has revealed 
him, this is not some bright pledge of 
redemption yet to come; it is life enduring 
and abundant here below. In communion 
with the Father of our spirits we become 
sharers of the divine nature. The pure 
in heart are never far from heaven, for 
they always see God's face. Knowing God, 
they make God known through deeds of 
holiness which rebuke the imaspiring and 
bring courage to those in despair. 

Are there any interpreters of the divine 
life to be compared with those whose 
simple faith has made them lords of cir- 
cumstance.'^ A minister who, one morning, 
had been preaching from the words, "All 
things work together for good to them 



64 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

that love God," was introduced after the 
service to a young woman who ventured 
to say that she had enjoyed the sermon. 
A clergyman soon learns that such an 
expression may mean anything or nothing; 
and in this instance the remark would 
have passed by as a conventional polite- 
ness had not the young woman, who was 
wearing dark spectacles, proceeded to speak 
of the hospital where she was staying, 
and to add, ''I have come to the hospital 
to have my eyes removed." Earnest as 
the preacher had been in expounding the 
radiant confidence of the text in Saint 
Paul, he was not quick to dilate on the 
theme in presence of this girl's ordeal: and, 
as if understanding his silence, she said, 
reassuringly, "Jesus is with me." What a 
cant phrase that could be, but how vibrant 
with reality it sounded now! When, a 
few days later, and after the operation, 
the minister went to the hospital to see 



ETERNAL LIFE 65 

the stricken friend, it must be confessed 
that he went in no superior mood, as of 
one fully competent to "administer spir- 
itual consolation." On the contrary, he 
went as a scholar who would fain be 
taught. It was a memorable interview, one 
that the clergyman gratefully cherishes. 
Making his inquiries of the girl for whom 
eyesight was henceforth impossible, he was 
answered, "It's all dark outside"; and 
then she added, "But it's all light inside." 
Such is the affirmative power of the 
secret of the Lord, the secret of wresting 
from the heart of disaster an overflowing 
joy. There will not be occasion to relegate 
to the realm of the sentimental the proffer 
of Christ's peace so long as men find 
salvation to be, veritably, "Eternal life 
in the midst of time."^ 

Ah, Christ! If there were no hereafter. 
It still were best to follow thee. 



iHarnack's phrase in What is Christianity? 



THE BLOSSOMING CROSS 

That Christianity is the affirmation 

rather than the denial of Ufe, and that 

the Christian's self-denying is but the 

better realization of the true self, is the 

message brought us by this Gospel, the 

glad tidings of the enrichment of life. 

The Christian programme for mankind is 

summed up in the phrase, "The Kingdom 

of God." That Kingdom constitutes the 

summum honum, greatest good and highest 

happiness. To the great endeavor, to the 

work of bringing in the Kingdom, both 

Jesus and his followers are committed. 

The greatest good for the individual is 

attained to the extent that he furthers 

the interest of that Kingdom of benefit 

for all. Fitting himself for the mighty 
66 



THE BLOSSOMING CROSS 67 

task, he will "'deny" himself; that is to 
say, he will put out of the way whatever 
he knows would hinder progress toward 
the desired goal. Such denial of self 
being always for the sake of a greater 
good will prove the noblest form of self- 
assertion. The lower self only is thus 
denied, the better self is more fully affirmed. 
"Art is a jealous god," said Michael 
Angelo, "and requires the whole man." 
What the scholar will forego for his science, 
what the patriot will surrender for his 
country, the Christian disciple will do for 
the holiest of causes. Family, private 
property, complete independence — each of 
these, in some great emergency, may be 
sacrificed by patriot or disciple; but the 
surrender of them, as Albrecht Ritschl 
pointed out, does not in itself, as mere 
"surrender," assure a more positive and 
rich development of the moral nature. 
Apart from the highest motive, such sur- 



68 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

render threatens the moral nature, since 
such blessings as the family relation and 
property are the generally essential con- 
ditions of moral health and of the forma- 
tion of character. 

Having redemptive aims to compass, the 
Son of man endured suffering. He never 
prayed that he might drink of a bitter 
cup, nor did he ever set forth the quest 
of pain as a duty for us. Darkness and 
pain not of our seeking are at some time 
the portion of us all. Of such assignment 
of sorrow the Galilsean was well aware, 
and he proffered an inward sustaining. 
If, as Nathaniel Shaler once said, ''men 
may now as Christians look upon existence 
more cheerfully than the pagan Greeks 
in their best days, with a deeper joy, 
for they see further into the deeps," it 
is because the evangel, however firmly it 
announces a deferred and distant good, 
brings none the less a tangible boon. 



THE BLOSSOMING CROSS 69 

Nor, as we inevitably learn, is it only 
in life's poignant crises that men may 
find heaven's help at hand. Toiling at 
our trivial rounds, we may discern that 
even upon the monotony of duty "some 
gleam of glory lies." And at eventide, 
when the day's work is done and we fore- 
gather under the kindly roof, the Great 
Companion of our joy will make his 
presence known. In Lhermitte's painting, 
"L'Ami des Humbles," the Guest at the 
supper in the Emmaus cottage is dressed 
in homely garb like that of the peasants 
who give him welcome. The great picture 
was one day being discussed by a group 
of visitors, and ojie of the company was 
heard to exclaim, "I don't like it. It's 
too everyday." Blessings on all artists 
and prophets and the obscure and nameless 
servants of God who make clear to the 
world that herein is the Christ's true 
glory, in being an "everyday" sort of 



70 OUR BROTHER OF JOY 

Friend, Brother for our adversity and 
Brother of our joy. Well may we hasten 
to share his high emprise against grief and 
sin in the world. And though devotion 
to his standard should demand a heroic 
sacrifice of some lesser good, faith sees a 
wisdom in what, to worldly eyes, were but 
a martyr-madness. Faith knows that the 
* 'crimson rains" never water the earth in 
vain; and faith feels the promise of an 
hour when Master and servant shall meet 
in "the last reconciliation, when the cross 
shall blossom with roses." 



REFERENCES 

In addition to the books quoted in the foregoing 
pages, the following references are offered for what 
light they may shed on some aspects of Asceticism. 

1. Asceticism in the Hebrew Church. 

E. Schiirer: History of the Jewish People in 
the Time of Jesus Christ. Division II, Vol. 
II, pp. 188-218; 118-120. 

F. C. Conybeare: Critical edition of Philo 
about the Contemplative Life. See the 
"excursus on the authorship." 

Life of Flavins Josephus. Section II. 

2. Catholic Asceticism. 

Harnack: Monasticism. 

R. F. Littledale: art., "Monachism," in En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. 

Catholic Encyclopedia. 

William James: The Varieties of Religious 
Experience. 

3. The Teaching of Jesus. 

H. H. Wendt: The Teaching of Jesus. 
Charles Gore: The Sermon on the Mount. 
A. B. Bruce: Disciple-Logia : Expositor, 5th 
series, Vol. VIII, pp. 1-16. 

4. Saint Paul's Doctrine of the Flesh. 

Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New 
Testament. 

71 



72 REFERENCES 

A. B. Bruce: Expositor, 4th series. Vol. IX, 

p. 189ff. 
William P. Dickson: Saint Paul's Use of the 

terms Flesh and Spirit (Baird Lectures, 

Glasgow, 1883). 
W. Sanday: Int. Critical Commentary on 

Romans, p. 169. 
For an opposite interpretation, see Pfleiderer*s 

Paulinism. 
5. Asceticism and the Christian Gospel. 
F. Paulsen: Ethics, chapter II. 
H. R. Reynolds: "A Study in Heno-Chris- 

tianity," Expositor, 5th series. Vol. II, 

p. 321ff. 
Goldwin Smith: The Founder of Christendom. 
J. S. Blackie: Four Phases of Morals. 
F. G. Peabody: Jesus Christ and the Christian 

Character. 
Martensen : Christian Ethics, E. Tr. Division 96. 



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